a bitter heart
by ohtasha
Summary: It is not only his training and instructions that make the soldier hate Rogers. It is something grounded in memories of something that happened once before. Pushkin is not the only source of his antagonism.


_In the desert_

_I saw a creature, naked, bestial,_

_Who, squatting upon the ground,_

_Held his heart in his hands,_

_And ate of it._

It is not hatred, but obedience that is written into his DNA. The soldier does not need to be instructed to hate a target, only to eliminate it, only to ensure that HYDRA's needs are best and fully served. Emotion, HYDRA has told him, is complicated and soldiers need not be complicated. Soldiers exist to follow commands, to dirty their hands and wear black so the blood does not show. Soldiers do not exist to feel and to empathise and to carry out their own agendas. Pushkin is a force in the Red Room and Pushkin seeps into the soldier:

_Devoid of God and uninspired,_

_Devoid of tears, of fire, of love._

Except on the bridge, Pushkin begins to bleed out, droplet by droplet. A tall man. A golden man. A face and two names (Bucky, Steve Rogers; Bucky Bucky Bucky) that might mean something, but do not exist in the depths of Soviet Russia, and if they do not exist there then they cannot exist at all.

Only they do.

And Pushkin keeps bleeding out as he runs from the bridge, gets picked up and driven back to the base. The soldier's world is one where the darkness is overtaking the light, and his eyes have adjusted accordingly: having the light creep in rubs coarsely against his DNA, is pain beyond anything imaginable or knowable (though the soldier thinks perhaps that this is not the first time he has experienced something such as this). Emotion is worse than the reprogramming and the coercion and the experiments on his arm, the rogue nerve ending being fused with the metal skin.

He remembers- vaguely- back alleys in New York and promises made and stepping in just in time and a scrawny kid who got bigger. He remembers- vaguely- fighting and falling and plummeting and pain and then nothing til he was woken up again.

Until the memories stop and the pain begins again, and there is no more 'he' because the soldier needs no past or future beyond what is ascribed. It seems that Pierce has them top up the Pushkin, too.

_Devoid of God and uninspired,_

_Devoid of tears, of fire, of love._

Pushkin starts bleeding out again when the soldier meets Rogers again on a bridge. (Something to do with an outfit, perhaps; an outfit that pricks holes in his psyche.) Slowly, slowly, because they calibrated him differently this time and the darkness has a much stronger hold.

It is contrary to his mission, but the soldier hates Rogers. Hates the blinding pain of the light that strikes whenever the two meet, hates that the darkness is always stronger when the soldier has left his presence, hates that the command to obey is more forceful where Rogers is concerned.

The soldier (Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes. The Winter Soldier) begins to understand, begins to remember more fully when Rogers pulls him out from under the metal, when Rogers won't fight back, when Rogers fall into the blue depths. And the soldier hates him.

He sees this golden man, this tall man, this apparent bastion of freedom and thinks, you know nothing of poverty, of want, of desperation, of the sheer magnitude of the will to survive; of the options you do not have when you are in such a situation. And he hates this man, Steve Rogers, whoever he is and whoever he was, because of this. Because Rogers is rich in the capital of opportunity and command, and the soldier is poor poor poor.

(Something about being older and a friend and going with a scrawny kid no matter what. Something about having to be rescued when it was always the other way around. Something about watching C- about watching another man take the plaudits. Something about Cap- about someone forcing him into second place. Something about Bucky Barnes not needing some bullshit serum to serve his country and being forced to take second place to man who did.)

It is not only his training and instructions that make the soldier hate Rogers. It is something grounded in memories of something that happened once before. Pushkin is not the only source of his antagonism.

The soldier has a mission to complete so he lets Rogers fall.

(Bucky has a friend to save, and this time the fall doesn't have to be the end.)

Steve is pulled from the water, none too gently, but the man checks that he's alive before leaving.

_I said, 'Is it good, friend?'_

'_It is bitter- bitter,' he answered;_

'_But I like it_

'_Because it is bitter,_

'_And because it is my heart.'_


End file.
